


Agents Carter

by justanotherStonyfan



Series: Banned Together Fills [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Peggy Carter, Bisexual Steve Rogers, F/M, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Injury Recovery, M/M, Multi, Referenced Sex, Secrets, implied heterosexual oral sex, implied heterosexual sex, implied sex, internalized ableism, pre M/M/F relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28868352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherStonyfan/pseuds/justanotherStonyfan
Summary: When he comes to her, he’s kneeling. Hands behind his head, eyes down, he’s kneeling in the middle of her office floor and there she is, gun in hand, pointing a weapon at something that looks a lot like someone she used to know.“You have five seconds,” she says, “and then I’ll be required to redecorate.”My Fixit universe.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: Banned Together Fills [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1825168
Comments: 30
Kudos: 112
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	Agents Carter

**Author's Note:**

> HOPEFULLY this is enough to fill my **gays holding hands** Banned Together Bingo square, even though the gays holding hands are technically bisexuals.
> 
> For Ash, whose fault this is.

When he comes to her, he’s kneeling. Hands behind his head, eyes down, he’s kneeling in the middle of her office floor and there she is, gun in hand, pointing a weapon at something that looks a lot like someone she used to know.

“You have five seconds,” she says, “and then I’ll be required to redecorate.”

And he looks at her, older - she can see it on his skin, in his eyes, in the set of his mouth - but unmistakable.

“What,” she says, a whisper torn from inside her heart, and her gun-hand falters.

She brings it back up when she sees that he’s noticed.

Blond, blue-eyed, broad-shouldered, he’s different, so different, and yet he’s very much the same.

“Won…” she says, and she locks her knees, “wonderful,” and she shakes her head, her lungs are trembling. Of all the terrible things she’s had to get rid of, all the awful messes they’ve had to deal with, why does this one have his face? “Wonderful weather we’re having,” she says.

“Yes,” he answers, and something unspools in the bottom of her heart. “But I always carry an umbrella.”

~

It’s not enough, of course. She doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t trust him when he provides her with coordinates, or cites verbatim the many conversations they’ve had. She doesn’t trust him when he tells his story - improbable, and uncharacteristic of him. She doesn’t trust him when he tells her what she and the girls did at Bletchley, though there’s no way on Earth he can know.

“You have to treat what I tell you with the same secrecy,” he tells her. “You cannot speak about it. Not as long as you live.”

No, she trusts him not at all until, hours later, when he’s finished relaying his ridiculous claims, he holds his head high and tells her,

“I can’t stay.”

That, she realizes. 

That’s him.

He’s given her coordinates - two sets of them. He leans towards her and she sees the pain in his eyes, he kisses her.

“I love you,” he says. “I have _always_ loved you. But you’re not mine to love.”

And then he’s touching his hand to his watch in the middle of the night, in the middle of a secure facility, then he’s enveloped in red and and white and a gas mask that glows, with an A on the breast.

“We’ll see you soon,” he says, and then he shuts his eyes - she can see the pain in them.

And then he’s gone.

She stares at the empty space.

She searches the corners of the room with her eyes. 

Her eyes sting and her throat aches and she presses her hand to her desk.

Howard.

She has to get hold of Howard.

~

There’s no looking. There’s no confusion, no difficulty. Howard never stopped, but they barely have to start.

She brings Howard in and he believes her, because it’s Howard Stark, and the only thing remotely as ridiculous as the story told by the transient being who appeared in her office late that night is Howard Bloody Stark. And so he sits because she tells him to sit, and he listens while she talks.

And then he stands. Turns. Turns back. Turns away.

“I,” he says, “I’m going home,” and she waits - she knows him better than that, she knows to wait for the other shoe, she can see him panicking, caught between elation and agitation. “Jarvis’ll pick you up at four.”

She checks her watch - it’s almost one in the morning now.

“Don’t be an idiot, Howard,” she tells him. “We’ll sleep on the bloody boat.”

***

It takes only as long as the journey. As if by magic, there is no more searching, there is no more wondering, no more organization of search parties. They go to where the apparition sent her and, on approach,

“There,” she says, and Howard sees it too on the radar, not much of a difference but enough.

“Christ,” Howard breathes, because there are “Jesus Christ, Peggy.” 

Edwin doesn’t say anything, leaning forward, brow furrowed.

“That’s it,” she says. “That’s the Valkyrie.”

She’d know the silhouette anywhere, even as far below the ice as it is. 

Their crew is ready, their equipment is primed, and they pour out into the snow, onto the ice, and start digging.

By the time the sun comes up, they’re headed home. 

_All_ of them.

***

It’s awful.

Their technology isn’t good enough, not by far, and Howard does what he can but it’s not much, it’s so far from enough.

She’s heard Steve scream, in the laboratory in Brooklyn. She’s heard him cry out once when he was hit in France, hiss in pain when he was caught by a blade in Italy.

But the pain she hears when they’re four hours into thawing him makes her heart leap into her mouth, arrests all of them. She’s never heard this - a long, low, wavering wail through his nose because his lips are still frozen shut, the ice crackling around him.

They’re still in parkas, and Steve is lying on a table, but at least they’re in the room with him.

“Steve,” she says, and she presses her hand to his shoulder through the uniform because they don’t know what damage they might do to his flesh if they try and remove it. 

His whole body vibrates with the sound, and she wants to cradle his face, to tell him it’s alright.

There are no technicians this time, only her and Howard and Edwin, no-one to administer anything, to monitor. Three people and an icon unburied, in a basement in the middle of the night.

“It’s alright,” she tells him, as effectually as the last time. “It’s alright.”

He peters out eventually, and she prays he’s unconscious.

***

“Are those..?” Howard says, and Edwin looks at her while Howard’s looking at the map.

“That’s the alps,” she says, looking straight back at Edwin - the second set of coordinates led them to a spot they knew. “It’s where Sergeant Barnes fell.”

***

Ice sounds like bones breaking, shearing metal sounds like the terrified cries of a thousand dying men and, in perfect darkness, those things echo without ever falling into silence. Other voices reach him in the darkness, a grating scream, forced laughter, a gentle promise and threat after threat. German, French, English, Italian, he hears the accents in the English too. Gunfire, weaponsfire, the scream of blue flames and the song of a perfect cube of light and then music, soft and scratchy and hardly music at all.

It echoes too, as though it’s somewhere far, far away from him, down a long corridor, through a door. And there’s the soft scrape of paper on paper as the blackness turns slowly orange. With the orange comes the smell of soap and disinfectant, of cotton and dust. Wood, metal, and he tries to open his eyes.

They’re dry, they _hurt_ , and it doesn’t work the first time. When it does, when they open, it happens all at once, they snap open where they’ve been glued shut, and he’s blind for a long few moments as the orange turns to white-

He tries to make a sound, to hiss through his teeth or groan, but his throat is too dry, he doesn’t make a sound. He can’t move his head for a long few moments, either, so that the brightness is painful, unrelenting, and he tries to breathe. 

But there’s no saltwater, no burning ice in the back of his throat, no struggle for air. He’s warm. 

He’s warm, and it’s not because he’s stopped feeling, but _because he’s warm._

He’s warm, his eyes are open and, by his bed, someone sits in a chair with a manilla folder held in hands whose fingernails are painted red.

***

“This feels a lot like that whole knocking on the front door thing,” Howard says.

The unspoken _’remember how that one ended’_ remains unsaid, but Steve shakes his head. 

“You don’t have to come with me,” he answers, head down, relearning maps he’d memorized once already, a long time ago. “But I’d suggest you don’t try and stop me.”

Peggy narrows her eyes and slaps her papers down on her desk, Steve lifts his head at the sound.

“You’re an idiot, Steve, I’m the one who gave you the bloody coordinates, why on earth would we be trying to stop you going? The point is we’re on our own. No SSR. No US Army. Just you, and me, and Howard.”

Edwin clears his throat and then Steve looks at him.

“It could be awful,” Steve says to Edwin, “but I’d be glad for any help I can get.”

“Ah, well in that case,” Edwin says, and he smiles, that secretive, intelligent little thing most people don’t get to see. “Please consider me at your service, Captain.” 

Steve smiles tightly, looks down at the maps, the coordinates, the radio frequencies, the lists of supplies, the letters Howard’s drafted to cover their tracks. 

“Alright,” he says, nodding, and then he looks at them all in turn. “Let’s bring him home.”

***

They travel. The four of them go together, and she sits close to him. Despite what they had, despite what the apparition told her, he is distant, cold. For a while, she thinks perhaps he’s changed his mind but, when they land, before they set out on their trek, and turns to her in the darkness and tells her.

“I love you,” he says. “But-”

“I know,” she says, because the apparition told her that, too. “We’ll find him. We’ll make sure his family have someone to bury, Steve, I know you...”

And it’s hard. Without him there, it’s still hard - she…she’s known men like them, of course she has. Hard to miss them in the forces sometimes, women too - at Bletchley there were a few. Hard to see him as one, hard to accept that as part of him.

“What?“ he says, softly. 

“I know you…” She says, and he straightens, draws his shoulders back and lifts his head, his face unreadable. 

Steve loved James Buchanan Barnes as obviously as the sun would rise - his denial of it only proves how deep it ran.

“It’s all right,” she says. “I…”

“I love _you_ ,” he says, sure and confident - he says it then for the first time and it steals the breath from her lungs. “And I’m bringing my friend home.” 

~

There is a trail.

He’s going to bring Bucky’s body home if it’s the last thing he does, regardless of whether he has permission to do so or not, his eidetic memory tells him where they were when Bucky fell, he’s going to bring the body home. But, instead of the body of his best friend, Steve fiends pieces of him, bloodstains, fabric, still frozen in the bottom of the ravine.

“He was here,” Steve says, and his eyes are dark and his breaths come hard and fast, clouds in the frigid air, fury in his veins.

“You have to be certain. If you’re sure,” she tells him, Howard nodding beside her, Edwin freezing cold but strong as ever. “We’ll do everything, we’ll do _everything_ we can.”

Steve, one hand in blood-red snow, unstained because he blood’s frozen solid like the rest, nods. He’s sure.

He looks over his shoulder, into the darkness of the jagged rocks.

“That way,” he says.

“How?” she answers - not doubting him for a second.

Steve narrows his eyes.

“I can smell him.”

***

Blood smells specific, so does fear, and they follow a long and winding trail - they lose it, they pick it up, Howard and Peggy and Steve on a mission nobody’s sanctioned.

When they find the facility, Steve leaves no-one alive. He carries Bucky from the carnage without a word to the others, and Peggy burns it to the ground. 

He’s not awake. That isn’t what he is - unresponsive, ice cold, eyes closed, whatever he is, he’s not awake. But he’s alive.

***

It’s a good hospital. Clean, out of the city, well out of the way. They’d all be too recognisable in the city, Steve especially. As it is, the present fashion serves them well - no-one is surprised by a young man in a coat and hat, and Peggy dresses as demurely as she can. She pins her curls back into the rolls she used to wear at Bletchley, and ignores the lipstick she keeps as warpaint, so that instead, ‘Rebecca’ arrives with ‘Robert,’ to see his brother ‘Benjamin.’

“Prisoner of war, was he?” they ask, and she clings to Steve’s arm and lets him answer just to make sure they look harmless.

“Yeah, they found him not too long ago,” he says, shoulders hunched, hair mostly hidden, doing a fair imitation of Dugan’s Boston drawl. “Mind if I ask what room?” 

But there’s no interaction with anyone they can’t fool. She doesn’t even have to speak, not really - the doctors all look past her and speak to Steve, and it’s simple enough. 

The hardest thing about it is keeping Steve calm. He’d been hard enough to convince about putting James in a hospital in the first place, and it had been a battle getting him to sleep at home though they both knew Howard was keeping an eye on James. She can practically feel the tension radiating from him now, though he hides it well - it took her long enough to teach him in Europe. 

“Almost,” she says softly as they reach James’ ward - the place is all but abandoned, one nurse collecting a chart at the other end of the ward. 

This is what Howard Stark’s money will buy you, of course. Nothing but the best for James Barnes. 

When they found him, he was bloodied and bruised and filthy, dressed in what amounted to sackcloth. She’d expected him to die. Steve, of course, had carried him home just as he promised, but James’ fever, the stump of his severed arm infected, had burned high and long. 

He _should_ have died. 

She knows why he lived. Steve, this Steve, her Steve, does not. 

Now, now that he has been cleaned and treated, now that he is lying unconscious in a bed in a ward with no-one on it, his stump covered by bandages, she can only be grateful for what saved him. Steve doesn’t need to act his sadness, the way his heart aches for James - she can see it. 

“Bucky,” he murmurs, and if that’s the best he can manage, she won’t hold it against him.

James is shockingly pale without the obscuring grime, his hair an untrimmed, shaggy cloud about his head. They’ve shaved the stubble from his jaw, but otherwise he’s starkly pallid and emaciated, a clear sign of how neglected he has been.

“Go on,” she says softly, and it’s all Steve needs to leave her side.

He goes to James’ bedside somehow at once hastily and hesitantly, and stands there for a long few moments, at the side of his missing arm, until he recognises that he can sit. He pulls the nearest chair closer, and sinks into it, his face the picture of sadness.

(He would tell her later - James used to play the piano. Often hard at work, or tired from it, he could only sometimes be persuaded on special occasions.)

“Hey,” Steve says softly, without expecting an answer, and he lifts his hand takes James’ in his own where his remaining arm rests across his stomach.

He leans forward, his hand gentle in James’ but strong nonetheless, and there is more - for one moment, brief though it is, his hand shifts upward, as though he means to lift James’ hand. It is such a small gesture, such obvious comfort that its meaning might be missed by someone else, but she has come to know him well in the years they fought together. 

More than the friendship they showed, more than the kinship they shared, love meant not only for friend and family. Were she not there, he would have kissed James’ fingers. He doesn’t do it, of course. He’s no fool. He and James have survived together this long but she knows, in that instant, what she’s seen. All that remains is to find out what that means for all of them.

“I’ll give you some time,” she says, proud that she kept her voice unwavering.

And Steve looks at her, love and gratitude in his eyes.

“Thank you,” he says, and goes back to staring at James, who does not wake.

***

It’s the right decision. 

She makes it after long consideration, thinks it over and considers what she knows of them, what she knows of herself. And of Alan, at Bletchley, one or two of the girls there, too, a fair few of the WAAFs. That feeling, it’s not unknown to her.

And so she waits, until they’re home, where Steve doesn’t have to worry about him considering her a threat to James, where he doesn’t have to be wary of who else might overhear. He sits at her dining table, staring off into the distance, and she knows. 

“James,” she says, and he looks at her.

He’s a tremendous judge of character, she has learned, despite being terrible at most spy-work. She isn’t surprised when whatever he sees in her face gives her game away.

“Peg,” he says, and shakes his head.

It is unspoken between them for a long few moments, that she knows, that he knows it’s true. She speaks first, because there’s so little for him to say.

“What now?” she says, and he lifts his head, grief on his handsome face.

Pain, always so much of it. 

“Peg,” he says, his voice a rasp, and she makes a decision.

In the war, he never lied to her. Not if she asked him. Philips wouldn’t ask - he learned not to. She and Steve and Howard and Barnes, they got things done and you didn’t ask questions but Steve never lied to her. 

“Do you love him?” she says.

He folds in on himself as she watches, his face creasing, his shoulders hunching.

“I love you,” he says, and his voice is soft - he’s never lied to her.

“Do you love him, Steve?” she persists, and he flinches, burned.

“I don’t know how not to,” he says.

And it flares hot and bright in her chest - it feels like betrayal, like loss, but he has never lied to her. He has _never_ lied to her.

The burn in the back of her throat fades, the ache in her chest eases. 

“Do you love me?” she says, and it’s as it crosses her lips that she realizes what a balm it will be, to her, to him, to all of them.

“I love you,” he says, lifts his head to say it, eyes burning bright. “I love you, Peggy, I do.”

And so she considers it. That he could love both. If a mother can love more than one child, if a widow can love more than one husband, can’t a husband love more than one woman? 

Than one man?

***

Steve gives the shield to Howard. He has something that means more to him now.

***

She’s unsure at first, and she knows how it will look for her to keep two men in the house, but times haven’t changed so much. She lives in Brooklyn, and they lived in Brooklyn, and nobody batted an eyelid when they were together. If she keeps a husband and a lodger, whose business is it but their own?

“Easy, Buck,” Steve murmurs, and that’s when she knows for certain.

Wild-eyed and in pain in hospital, James Buchanan Barnes said not a word for a week, two weeks, a month. And then,

“This real, Stevie?” 

Now, Steve helps him, step by step, up beige carpet, between white walls, to the spare bedroom in her house - their house - and keeps one arm about his waist, the other cupping James’ remaining elbow. 

“I’ve got you,” he says, soft and gentle, and they go, step by step, heads together, James with his head down, Steve with his eyes on James’ feet, the stairs, how far they’ve got to go. “There’s a whole room for you, buddy, you’re gonna be safe here. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you any more, not while we’re here.”

It does make her eyes sting, she can hear how it thickens Steve’s voice. He presses his mouth to James’ temple as they climb, dot and carry, up the stairs. 

“You’re gonna be alright, Bucky,” he says. “You’re gonna be okay.”

~

She follows after a few minutes, when they’ve turned the corner, when the spare room has become James’ room. 

He wears sky blue - sky blue is what they bought him. She’s seen the insides of those facilities - stone and metal, grey and black. He has sky blue pajamas, one sleeve pinned. His hair is clean, though almost brushing his shoulders, but it doesn’t matter. His eyes are hooded, haunted, dark circles surrounding them and dark stubble on his jaw but he’s here. They’re all, somehow, here. 

“Easy, e-asy,” Steve says softly - he must have undressed and dressed James, just as he’s helping him into bed now.

James was skittish, shivery, flinching and startling, but that was with people he didn’t know, hands that weren’t Steve’s. He’s still cautious of her, she can see it - he glances at her as she comes to stand in the doorway - but his fear is gone. With Steve, he’s just himself - injured, vulnerable. He doesn’t flinch from Steve’s hands, doesn’t shiver at Steve’s touch. 

He doesn’t speak.

Steve makes sure the pillows are sufficiently soft behind him that he can sit up in the bed.

“How’s that, Buck?” Steve says, smiling hopefully, earnest though he keeps his voice low. “That do for you? I’ll make you dinner soon, we can eat, okay?”

And James looks at him. She’s seen that look on his face before, though she knows better now what it means. James looks at her, a longing in his eyes, a sadness in the shape of his mouth, and then he looks at Steve.

“It’s okay, Bucky,” Steve says, and he holds the fingers of James’ remaining hand in his own. “She knows.”

His eyes go wide and _then_ he looks haunted, but she smiles gently when he looks at her. They’ve talked about this, her and Steve, long into the night while James’ eyes stayed closed. 

“I’m not askin’ anything of you,” Steve says. “Won’t ever, Buck, you’ve given so much. And I love her, same as I love you.” With his other hand, Steve reaches out, and she steps into the room to take his hand in hers. “If you don’t want anything from me, that’s fine. You can stay or go as you please, you’re not a prisoner, but you’re always welcome.” And Steve glances up at her before he looks back at James. “But if you want,” he says, “if there comes a time where wantin’ comes back…”

Steve draws a deep breath then, and she could say this for him but James won’t believe it from anyone else.

“Bucky, sweetheart, if you want to be a part of us, there’s always room for you.”

Steve kisses her fingers. Then he kisses James’ fingers too. 

“If wantin’ comes back to you, you come back to me. Alright?” 

James says nothing, but the fear fades from his eyes. He looks at her and she nods, and his eyes dull. Relief, she recognises. The lids sweep down. He is _exhausted_ , and so he settles back into the pillows and closes his eyes as he nods.

He, just as Steve, has given so much. Home can be home for all of them.

~

Steve makes vegetable soup for their evening meal, and she and he eat together. He takes a bowl up to James, and she goes to check on them after ten minutes or so.

James is, as he was earlier, propped up amongst the pillows, and Steve sits on the bed by his hip, feeding him. 

Steve doesn’t acknowledge that she’s there, though he must know. She doesn’t know if James is aware of her, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t seem distracted.

Steve, she notices, does not pull faces when he feeds James. He doesn’t open his mouth as James opens his, like a parent, doesn’t imitate the movements out of instinct. He smiles, patient and gentle, and feeds James mouthful by mouthful.

“Made it myself, so sorry in advance,” he says, and the corner of James’ mouth ticks up for a moment. 

He doesn’t finish all of it, he can’t. He has half the bowl and then shakes his head, but Steve nods, brushes his hair back from his forehead and stands, pressing a kiss to the top of James’ head. James’ eyes close for the few moments of contact, and then he settles back again.

“Good?” Steve says, and James nods.

Steve smiles.

“You’re welcome to it, sweetheart,” he says, and James nods again. “Get some sleep, we’ll be here.”

And James does, lets his eyes slip closed as Steve leaves him to it. 

He smiles tightly at Peggy as he passes, leans down for a brief kiss. This man, these men, who’ve given so much and paid so high a price, who’ve seen such a great deal - and she with them, she supposes. They’ve all left pieces of themselves behind, all changed irreparably. But he is gentle and kind despite it, James is willing and hopeful, she can be strong for them as they are for her. They are good men. 

This, she knows, is the right decision.

***

He doesn’t broach the subject of physicality with her.

He offers, the galoot, to sleep on the sofa in the living room.

“Steve,” she says, “come to bed with me.”

It’s an ache they’ve carried with them, she knows that for truth. It’s burned in his eyes when he’s looked at her, thrummed in his bones when he’s watched her pass, and it’s just the same for her. He folds himself into the kiss she gives him, relief and desire washing over them both.

They don’t get as far as the bed the first time - what with James upstairs it’s probably for the best anyway - and she wakes at a quarter to two in the morning with his face pressed to her throat, his arm over her waist on the sofa. 

He’s inexperienced with women, but was not inattentive, and followed her instruction beautifully. 

“Darling,” she says quietly, and he stirs immediately, careful of her even in sleep.

“Mm?” he says. “Yeah?” 

She smiles, carding her fingers through his hair while she checks the time on the clock on the mantle. 

“We might do better to sleep in the bed,” she says, and he sighs softly, warm against her from neck to knee. 

“Slept on rocks in France,” he says. 

She laughs softly, can’t help herself. 

“Out of necessity,” she says, and he rouses himself, disheveled and satisfied, gives her the kind of grin she’s always longed to see on his face. 

“Hmm,” he says, and kisses her, a little thing. “Want me to carry you?”

She rolls her eyes and gets up off the sofa, gathers her blouse around her shoulders, straightens out her skirt. He finds his undershirt a moment before he finds his shirt, tugs his trousers back up to his waist with a mischievous grin that she finds herself laughing at - his smile widens in response. 

It makes him happy to see her happy, she realises. 

“I love you,” he says. “Can…Is that okay, I can say that?”

She holds out a hand to help him up, not that he needs it, and he stands, lets her draw him close. 

“I love you too,” she says. 

He smiles, he beams. 

“Come on, Captain,” she says. “Bed.”

His smile turns wry, the corner of his mouth lifts, and he sketches an atrocious salute.

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” he says.

***

She puts her keys in the recess under the half-moon table once she’s locked the door behind her. The table is well out of reach of the front door but she isn’t about to take risks about it.

The house is warm and smells like a bloody bakery again.

“You’re going to be the death of my figure,” she says as he steps out of the kitchen to greet her, too-small apron tied around him. “Wonderful weather we’re having.”

He wraps his arms around her waist and kisses her, smiling against her mouth.

“Yes but I always carry an umbrella,” he says, and squeezes her waist a little, pulls her a little tighter against him. “Your figure feels fine to me. You know, I really thought I had it figured out today.”

She shakes her head. 

“I left work early,” she says, and he nods with a sigh.

“Of course. You know, one day I’ll be there to open the door for you.”

“Hmm,” she answers. “How’s James?”

“Good,” Steve says. “He’s eaten twice today, I helped him up to the bathroom to wash. He let me shave him, too, and cut his hair, so he oughtta be a little less uncomfortable. I was reading to him this afternoon - he’s sleeping at the moment. Would you like something? Tea?”

“Mm, tea would be lovely, darling,” she says, and he smiles, lets her go so that she can get out of her shoes and into her slippers. 

He’s certainly got most of his timing right - she’s not even into her slippers when he comes in with a cup of tea, which means he must have just boiled the kettle before she got home. In fact, he’s so quick at it that he’s setting it down on the table and settling down onto his knees before she’s even got her slippers on.

“Oh, let me,” he says softly, not an admonishment but meant to sound like one, and he digs his thumbs into the sole of her foot for a moment or two.

“Don’t, I’ve been on them all bloody day,” she says. “They’ll be awful.”

“I’ve got the serum,” he says. “If they were awful, I’d know about it. Besides which,” he switches feet, “I have a hard time believing anything about you could be awful.”

He turns her foot in his hand and kisses her ankle, and then her calf, and then the inside of her knee.

“Steve,” she says, and he ducks his head under the hem of her skirt.

“I know you locked the door,” he answers, and she arches her back and gives in, covers her mouth with one hand and grasps the back of the sofa with the other. 

~

When he’s left her breathless, he takes the cup away with him.

“This’ll be cold,” he says, and she knows he’s right, the smug so-and-so. “I’ll make you a new one.”

If this is what coming home’s going to be like, she might go out more often.

***

They have meatloaf and vegetables for tea, which Steve’s spent the day making. He’s made scones for dessert too, and he goes upstairs afterward to make sure James gets something to eat, to change his dressings, to keep him company.

He’s cleaned at least all the downstairs rooms, possibly one or two upstairs. He made their bed this morning.

“You know,” he says, “I always had this picture in my head. Saturday or a Sunday maybe, and there’s you in your broderie anglaise nightgown with your hair in pins, the sun comin’ in on your pillow, and you’re smilin’ at me.”

She huffs a laugh.

“How nice,” she says. “And you?”

“Oh, me,” he says softly, gazing into her eyes as though she hung the moon. “I’m wherever you’d like me. Close.”

He’s a flirt, is the thing. He’s very bold with her, but kind with it. He worships the ground she walks on, she knows. If she told him to kneel at her feet, he’d do it. He’s led men into battle, he’s run through minefields, driven headlong into danger, and he’d do anything she asks. He’s the pinnacle of power, made as a symbol, and he tries to do nothing so much as give himself to her.

“I’m gonna take some of this up to Bucky,” he says. “I’ll be down in a little while, we can listen to the wireless if you’d like.”

She smiles at him. 

“That sounds lovely,” she says. “Although, there are a couple things I need to talk to you about, just to get an idea of…well, a few things.”

“Sounds ominous,” he says, clearing the dishes from the table. 

“Hm, no,” she says. “I thought we might talk about the boys.”

And he turns to look at her.

“Yeah?” he says.

She can see that he’s unsure.

“There’s no rush,” she says. “Take your time with James. We’ll talk about it later.”

He pauses a moment longer but nods eventually.

“Okay,” he says, “I trust you.”

He dishes up a plate of food, pours a glass of orange juice, and kisses her head on the way past. 

~

Bucky doesn’t speak much. He makes small noises when Steve asks if he likes something, but he doesn’t say many words strung together, not really.

That’s all right, for the time being. He doesn’t have to. He never has to. He can live mute if that’s what he wants, Steve will understand him anyway.

“It’s meatloaf,” Steve says as he sits down. 

He sets the dishes on the tray over Bucky’s lap - Bucky can feed himself, mostly. Steve cuts it all into chunks first, of course, but then he just sits with him. 

“ ‘S good,” Bucky says, his voice rough from lack of use, and Steve smiles.

Bucky can’t see him smile because Bucky’s got his head down, but Steve smiles nonetheless.

“There’s dessert if you want it, too,” Steve tells him. “But you don’t have to-”

“Seriously?” Bucky says, and he looks up this time. “You’re gonna do this the rest of my life, huh? Sit here, feed me? Change my bandages? Wash my goddamn-”

“You’d’a done the same for me,” Steve says. “Ask me how I know.”

Bucky scoffs, turns his head.

“You gonna sit in that bed the rest of your life, Buck? Gonna sit there and-”

“Fuck you-”

“-waste away, well what the fuck are you talkin’-”

“Steve-”

“-about, _what_ , Buck? A week ago you-”

“You gonna marry her?” Bucky asks, and Steve sighs through his nose.

“Some day,” he says. “Yeah.”

“And you’re, what, gonna keep me in the spare room like a goddamn storybook?”

“Plannin’ on keeping you in the bed between us eventually, asshole,” Steve answers.

“Yeah, and how’s she feel about it?” Bucky answers. “You, your wife, and your pet invalid-”

“Don’t,” Steve says. “Don’t you dare. You think for a second she’d let us stay, either of us, if she didn’t want it this way? You ain’t a pet, you ain’t a burden, you’re the man I love - and alright. Alright, if you don’t want it this way, we won’t have it this way, then none of us get what we want, but she’s keepin’ our secret ain’t she? She asked if I love you and I said I didn’t know how _not_ to love you. Listen, you sat by my bedside for years and you begged me not to die, and I didn’t, so suck it up, buster, it’s your turn. I love you and you’re gonna be fine, you hear me?”

Bucky looks at him, jaw set, and shakes his head.

“The hell do you want _me_ for?” he says eventually, soft, ashamed. 

“Bucky,” Steve says, and he reaches out, cups Bucky’s face in his palm. “I don’t know how not to love you. Or her. And if the two of you can’t get along then somethin’ has to change but I can love both of you. I _do_ already, she loves us both too.”

“She’s only got eyes for you, bonehead,” Bucky says, but Steve shakes his head. 

“Don’t know if I’m gonna marry her, Buck,” he says. “Don’t know if I can stand bein’ married to just one’a ya. But you don’t gotta get outta bed for nothin’ if you don’t want. If it takes you a year, if it takes you ten, you’re safe here. With us. We’ve got you.”

Bucky looks at him, stares and stares, and then he turns his head away.

“Meatloaf’s good,” he says softly.

“Yeah, dumbass, it’s your mom’s recipe,” Steve answers, and Bucky snorts a laugh.

***

It is five and a half months before they’re ready. Mostly, Steve was ready the moment he woke, but he refused her every suggestion of it until Bucky was ready too.

“Are you sure about this, darling?” she asks softly, standing behind him where he sits at her vanity. 

“Yeah,” he answers. “I gotta do it, it’s killin’ me.”

“They’ll be here any minute,” she says. “Why don’t you check on James?” 

It’s more to keep Steve busy than anything else, given that James would only need help with his tie, perhaps with pinning his sleeve.

They’re already at the door when she gets there, because they’re nothing if not organised, and she opens the door to find them standing there - Tim with a bunch of flowers, Gabe with a bottle of wine, Jacques and Monty with their hats in hand.

“Not today, thank you,” she says, and makes as if to close the door, and it gets a chuckle out of them, a guffaw out of Dugan. 

They pile in, one after the other, removing hats and coats and not assuming once that she’ll take them - good on them that they’ve remembered which side their bread is buttered on - and she directs them to the living room. It took enough to get them all here at once under the pretense of an engagement celebration, she’d at least like them somewhere they can make noise or faint with a reasonable amount of space available.

“Darling?” she calls up the stairs before she follows them in. “They’re here." And then she comes into the living room. "Anyone thirsty?” she asks, biting back a smile, and Dugan says,

“Sure, doll, I’ll take a scotch on the rocks, Monty here’ll have a ‘good old English Tea-’ ” his ‘English’ accent is still atrocious “-and the other two’ll have some of that fancy wine we brought, presumably.”

“You’re the worst,” Gabe chuckles.

“Why don’t you sit?” she says, raising an eyebrow. “He might be a while. If you can stand to wait, that is.”

“Aw, whassamatter, Peg?” Dugan’s asks, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “You don’t want us to meet him after all? Worried we’re not gonna like ‘im?”

She knows anyone else would never meet their standards, but they do a good job of hiding it.

“What _I’d_ like is for _you_ to _sit down,”_ she says, only half serious, but she knows he won’t - she knows none of them will. 

Expecting them to follow orders out of uniform is wishful thinking at best. 

“Oh, come on, Peg,” Monty says, smiling gently. “Where is the chap, let’s not keep him…”

But Monty’s face falls a moment later, his gaze lifting up over her shoulder as his mouth drops open, skin paling. The others, arrested By Monty’s sudden inaction, look first at him, and then in the same direction, and then all of them do exactly the same thing - faces falling in shock, skin pale, mouths open. Because Steve is nothing if not dramatic.

“By Jove,” Monty whispers, just as Jacques says just about the same in French.

Morita and Gabe stand stock still and silent, and Dugan says,

“Fuck me,” very quietly. “Sorry, Ma’am.”

“Hey, fellas,” Steve says, and she can hear the tightness in his throat as she turns to look at him, giving him a wry smile for his entrance. 

“When the hell,” Dugan says, already moving past her toward Steve in great strides, “did you get back?”

And then he’s yanking Steve toward him in the biggest bear hug she’s ever seen, the rest of them not far behind, a gaggle of voices and greetings, hands reaching out for him in a row of embraces that end in the crowd of them standing huddled and elated. Steve’s eyes shine as they do, his smile so broad she thinks it might ache tomorrow, and she smiles at all of them. 

“Cap,” Dugan says, and Steve answers,

“It’s just Steve now, fellas, but…” but then he turns sombre, and they - still able to read his body language as well as they did when it kept them alive in Europe - give him a little more room, stepping back to find out what he wants. “It’s not just me.”

James stands in the doorway, small and hesitant, one sleeve pinned to his shoulder and, credit to his men, for they’re all still his men, not a one of them flinches. Not a single one shows shock or fear or revulsion, not pity nor sadness.

“Bloody hell, Sarge,” Monty says, “it’s bally good to see you.”

And James comes into the room as though he’s coming home - he is, in a way, she supposes. They’re subdued, uncertain, but all still smiling, all watching James’ face like nothing’s changed. 

Steve reaches out for him and puts a hand against James’ back as he draws level, not to push but to anchor, and Gabe steps forward first, right hand held out to him to shake. James looks at it, takes it, and Gabe pulls him close for an embrace as well, Steve still at James’ back, the others gathering about him a moment later. 

“You know I think we might need that scotch after all,” Gabe mutters, and they’re being careful with James, she knows. 

“How ‘bout a light instead?” James answers, cigarette in hand, and it takes a couple of seconds before Dugan clocks it.

“Hey!” he says, indignantly, and James puts the cigarette in his mouth and produces the carton form his pocket.

“Look’a that,” he says around the cigarette. “Even one-handed I got lighter fingers’n you.”

And they laugh, and clap hands against shoulders and embrace some more, and Peggy shuts her eyes and allows herself to be relieved. The road ahead, she has no doubt, is long, and will be difficult. But at least, under everything that’s happened, James is still in there.

***

And so it goes like this.

Legends live best when they can live on in memory. Steve Rogers stays crashed in ice, James Barnes remains fallen to his death. But Margaret Carter’s secretary, her husband Robert, is terribly well-meaning. As far as brain versus brawn is concerned, the only thing he doesn’t lack is brawn, but he has his uses. And an atrocious beard, most of the time, but that’s necessity.

Their special operations liaison, Benjamin Carter, brother to Robert, makes one hell of an Intelligence Officer, despite his pinned sleeve and often haunted expression. 

And sometimes, Peggy has a meeting in London, at the same time her Intelligence Officer has a mission, at the same time her Secretary takes some vacation. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s always round and about the time the first Special Operations team on SHIELD’s payroll is heading out to solve a problem. Howard, of course, comes and goes as he pleases anyway.

They wear patches on their sleeves - their motto _FIDELITAS_ , below a heater shield filled by an eagle. (They have a better motto, Dugan says every once in a while, but ‘Do As Peggy Says’ looks a little odd in Latin.)

The war is over. 

Bucky Barnes fell from a train in the Alps, Captain America went down with his plane in the arctic, but Peggy knows more of the future that will be than any of the rest of them can fathom. And, with all of them standing vigilant, hidden in plain sight? 

HYDRA won’t stand a chance.


End file.
